


A Bird in Her Chest

by malariamonsters



Category: Outsiders (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-07
Updated: 2016-03-07
Packaged: 2018-05-25 06:32:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6184369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/malariamonsters/pseuds/malariamonsters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sally-Ann thinks of Hasil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Bird in Her Chest

**Author's Note:**

> TW: References to abuse.

Sally-Ann liked collecting things. Somehow Hasil had figured that out about her, even without her having to tell him. It seemed a lot about them was like that, that he’d intuit what she liked, and give it to her.

She liked collecting small things that she could hold in her hand, things that didn’t take up too much space, so that if she ever left she could take them with her. Hasil had given her a little bird. At night she opened up her window and perched it on the sill, and when she closed her eyes to sleep she liked to imagine that when she woke in the morning it would have transformed into the real thing, and would have flown away. He’d given her a bear that he’d made himself, with those fingers that liked to beckon her to him, that liked to stroke her cheek. Said it was how he felt about her, “Strong and fierce.”

He’d given her other things, too, things that were like the stories she read in the dead woman’s house. She liked stories because all the space they took up were inside of her, and she could carry them with her without anyone knowing. She could take a book out of the library and read it, and when she returned it she would still have all the best parts of it with her. Hasil had given her a little fluttering in her chest and in her stomach. He’d given her his smile. He’d given her a spark of warmth that she carried on her tongue and would smile around in the quiet of her room, to herself, where James couldn’t see her and question her about it.

There were things, though, that Hasil didn’t know about her. He didn’t know all the things that tethered her to the world. Things like what “coon” really means. She’d told him it wasn’t a nice word, but there was so much more to it than that. She didn’t mind explaining those things to him, though. In truth, it was nice. Explaining something to someone. Telling them something so they could understand, telling them something because they wanted to understand, understand her.

Hasil asked her questions like, “Are you ok?” He asked her, “Did I do something wrong?” and “Can I help?” They weren’t the type of questions Sally-Ann was used to hearing. James asked her other questions. She always had to answer his questions in the right way, and depending on his mood, whether he was on a fifth beer or ninth, her answer would be different. It was a game, with him, one she could never win, she knew, but whose end she might be able to postpone, if she gave the right answer. But with Hasil, there was never a wrong answer. Because it wasn’t a game. It was sincere, on his part. He really wanted to know what she felt, what she thought, and why. When Sally-Ann answered James it wasn’t so that he’d understand. It was so that whatever vision he had of her was confirmed, so that he’d be right, and so he’d leave her alone.

Sally-Ann liked that Hasil liked her. She liked the way he said silly things to make her smile. She liked the tattoos that covered his arms and chest and back, and she liked how obscurely vain he was about the feather in his hair. She liked him. He made her nervous, giddy. He made her play with her fingers and fidget, when she’d worked so hard to teach herself to stay still, to move as little as possible so as not to attract any attention.

Hasil didn’t know about her brother. He knew her mother had left and that she’d never known her father. He knew, even, that James could be vicious and that she was scared of him, more scared of him than she had ever been of the Farrels, even with all the stories she’d grown up hearing about them. But Hasil didn’t know how tied to James she felt. James had told her, more than once, that outside of him she had no one else. And he was right, wasn’t he? A girl whose own mother had left her? Hasil didn’t know that all the money she made went to James, because it was his house, and because he had raised her, and because it was really his money, anyway, because she owed him for all the food and shelter and teachings of how the world really is he’d given her. Hasil didn’t know that sometimes she confused fear with gratefulness, and that most days she was just happy to be able to have a routine—work, church, home, the library, home—to depend on so she didn’t have to think too much about where she was and what her life was. Hasil didn’t know that sometimes she had an urge to push the bird he’d given her off the sill, just to see it fall two stories to the ground outside.

One question Hasil had yet to ask her, that everyone else who had tried to be something like a friend to her had, was “Why do you always have to go home right after work?” She’d been reckless, that night with him. He’d come to her, apologizing as though that was something expected, had been flirtatious in a way someone with such terrible hair really had no right to be, and she’d given in to that abandon inside her that said, “Fuck it.” _Fuck him_. _Because you want to_. And she had and she’d loved it. It’d been a long time since she’d really wanted anything.

She’d known, though, the second her phone had rung what she had to do. Not just go home immediately and with the right excuse, but go home, and take all the things that Hasil had given her, and make a story out of them. Make it all something she could carry in her, that she could pull out whenever she was particularly alone or scared. And so she called him dirty and disgusting and a hillbilly—she’d told him what that word meant but now she made sure he really knew. She hoped, somehow, that he would know what she really meant, just liked he’d known to give her small, pretty things she could cherish.


End file.
